As an Argentinian cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is said to have a good relationship with Argentinian Jews. Rabbi David Rosen, the director of interfaith affairs for the American Jewish Committee, said that the new pope is a “warm and sweet and modest man” known in Buenos Aires for doing his own cooking and personally answering his phone. Read more
Catholic guilt has been laid to rest and even most Mass-going Catholics no longer feel guilty about sexual sins, according to research in the United Kingdom. While a poll of 4437 adults detected no evidence that Catholics feel more guilty about sexual sins than other religious people, it found that religious people in general feel Read more
New evidence that Venerable Pius XII saved Jews from the Holocaust has been unearthed by a British author who was given access to previously unpublished Vatican documents and tracked down victims, priests and others who had not told their stories before. A report in The Guardian newspaper says Vatican insiders believe this new evidence will Read more
Bishop Pat Dunn, the Catholic Bishop of Auckland, New Zealand, has expressed his disgust at the desecration of Jewish graves with anti-semitic obscenities, including Nazi swastikas, at a cemetery in Auckland. “The vandalism of Jewish graves is a despicable act and I am disgusted that any person or persons would stoop to this level of Read more
New Zealand’s Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Interfaith Relations has sent a Chag Sameach to the NZ Jewish community. Chag sameach means “Happy holiday” in Hebrew. Chag is the Hebrew word for holiday, sameach is the Hebrew word for happy. Chag sameach is the traditional greeting among Jews before any holiday. The message reads: Dear Jewish Read more
Most people, most of the time, are fundamentally decent. Hence if they knew that there’s a minority facing an epidemic of persecution — a staggering total of 150,000 martyrs every year, meaning 17 deaths every hour — there would almost certainly be a groundswell of moral and political outrage. There is such a minority in Read more
A German court has rejected identity and history in favour of a liberal concept of choice, but there’s more to right and wrong. In November 2010, a Muslim doctor in Germany carried out a circumcision on a four-year old-boy at the request of his parents. A few days later the boy started bleeding and was Read more
Britain’s Chief Rabbi and the Archbishop of Canterbury have declared conflicting positions about a Government plan to legalise same-sex marriages. For the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, any attempt to redefine marriage would undermine the character of a sacred institution recognised “from time immemorial”. For the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the Anglican Church is Read more
The Pope’s representative in Britain has urged Roman Catholic leaders to form a united front with their Muslim and Jewish counterparts to oppose gay marriage. Archbishop Antonio Mennini, the Apostolic Nuncio, called for closer co-operation with other faiths as well as Christian denominations to put pressure on the Government over its plans to allow same-sex Read more
“Religious perspectives on the current financial crisis: vision for a just economic order” was the theme of the eleventh meeting of the Bilateral Commission of the Delegations of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews, which was held in Rome from 27 to 29 March. The event was presided by Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, and by Cardinal Peter Kodwo Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
In an English-language joint statement issued at the end of the meeting, the two sides highlight that, “while many factors contributed to the financial crisis, at its roots lies a crisis of moral values in which the importance of having, reflected in a culture of greed, eclipsed the importance of being; and where the value of truth reflected in honesty and transparency was sorely lacking in economic activity”.
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